


Your Path, My Go

by Amahoshi



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-10 14:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13503735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amahoshi/pseuds/Amahoshi
Summary: In which a slightly different Sai wishes to teach more than play (kind-of), Hikaru is reluctant to learn, and mostly everything changes from there on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you've clicked on this title, thank you. It's been a long time since I've written anything, and this will be the first multi-chapter fic I have written in years. HnG has always held a very special spot in my heart, and it seemed fitting I would want my first fic (in a while) to be for this fandom. I can't promise fast and constant updates, but I will try. If you stick along for the ride, I'll try my best to make it a fun one.

_Who are you?_

_You…_

_Eh? What?_

_No… You… what is your name?_

_Hikaru. Shindou Hikaru! What’s your name?_

_… Sai…_

_Sai?_

_Yes, Fujiwara no Sai._

_***_

The most exciting thing that has happened to Shindo Hikaru is riding in an ambulance after fainting in his grandpa’s shed. The strangest thing that has happened to him is the purple-haired ghost that appeared in front of him, causing the necessity of said ambulance. The first event he can brag about; the second event he’s still trying to wrap his mind around.

It’s strange, and Hikaru has received no explanation for why he suddenly acquired a ghostly attachment. Especially since the ghost just sits on his bed without moving — hasn’t moved since they returned from the hospital. It’s not how he expects a ghost to act. The TV show he watched the week before with the haunted spirit in the piano crosses his mind, and he wonders if the creator for that show also saw a ghost sitting in his room. Maybe this ghost could meet that ghost, and they could go and do ghostly things together — far, far away from him and his bed.

Hikaru opens his mouth to say something, anything, but another look at the pale figure draws his mouth shut. He doesn’t know how to approach it.

This ghost _could_ be nothing but a figment of his imagination — an overactive imagination caused by the thrill of finally riding in an ambulance, multiplied by the guilt of raiding his grandpa’s shed. He runs this explanation through his mind a few times, but _something_ doesn’t sit right. There’s a slight transparency to the silhouette, and its robes traveled right through him earlier entering the room. It _should be_ a figment of his imagination, a hallucination.

But there’s just something about it. From the dark purple hair to the translucent skin to the stark white robes, there’s just something so overwhelmingly _real_ about the presence currently parked on his bed.

“Hikaru.” A voice carries through the room, soft but steady. Hikaru starts — it _talks_ , he realizes  —  then trips and promptly crashes to the ground. It moves away from his bed and walks towards him, instead of floating like all the ghosts in the shows he watched did.

“Why did you fall over?” It bends over him, purple eyes blinking curiously.

“It’s because you scared me!” Hikaru jumps up without much thought, fist already raised up — because no amount of stranger danger lessons have managed to instill a sense of self-preservation in him — when he finally remembers the robes travelling through him, and that this is a ghost — without a corporeal body. He lowers his arm, then drops down to the floor with a huff, arms crossing together to divert attention from the heat he feels crawling up his ears. “Why are you still here anyways?”

It blinks in response but doesn’t make fun of his blunder like he expects it to. Instead, it takes a few steps back, then settles down across from him, robes fluttering before falling into place.

“Will you listen to my story?”

***

Hikaru learns about an asshole who cheated, a prideful man who drowned — literally — his anguish, and a young man who, in giving up his passion, left behind a legacy.

***

“So? You want to continue playing Go?” Hikaru asks, arms stretching out in a wide, lazy arc. Sai pauses. The sleeve of his robe comes up to cover the lower half of his face, and he closes his eyes, making it impossible for Hikaru to read his emotions.

“Torajiro died a famous Go player, but I did something terrible to him.” Sai’s voice sounds far away, like there are memories playing out in his head Hikaru is not privy to.

“The second person I met upon waking up became my student, of sorts. A dear friend, much like Torajiro. And, now, I’ve met you.” Sai purses his lips, looking straight at Hikaru.

“I would like to teach you how to play Go.”

Hikaru snorts, and refuses.

***

Karma is a bitch, and Hikaru’s positive this is retribution for sneaking into his Grandpa’s shed to find something to sell.

“Hikaru!” He swats his hand halfheartedly in the general direction the voice comes from.

“What are you doing? Let’s play Go.” Sai doesn’t do well with subtle hints, he’s quickly learning.

Sai continues hovering behind him, like he has been doing for the past _three hours_ , and Hikaru barely resists the urge to grab his hair because he just redid his hair recently — dye is way too expensive to waste because of ghosts who may or may not be a figment of his imagination  

“Homework,” he says, settling for a petulant scowl. “Mom said I wouldn’t get an allowance next week if my grades don’t go up.” It’s a reminder to himself, really.

“History?” Sai peers over his shoulder, then a long, pale finger points to the third question.

“That’s wrong. It should be Year Heian 375.” Hikaru’s head snaps up because that’s the best thing he’s heard all day; Sai isn’t a ghost — Sai is a winning lottery ticket he should have picked up the day he started school. He really needs to apologize to Karma.

“Do you know the rest of the answers?” He asks, noticing an entire minute too late the way Sai’s mouth curves up in a slow smirk, eyes crinkling into semi half-moons.

***

Twenty history questions and a lot of whining from a childish ghost later, Hikaru finds himself in front of a familiar house again — not exactly how he wanted to come back. He glares at Sai, jabbing the bell more than pushing it. There’s a pattering of footsteps behind the door, and Hikaru takes half a step back, bracing himself.

“Coming, coming. Who is — Hikaru!” The last syllable quickly takes a reproaching tone. Hikaru shrinks his neck back and can only give a sheepish grin in response. “Hey Gramps.”

His grandpa, Shindou Heihachi, is a self-proclaimed Go champion and spends a few minutes grousing about “mischievous brats and getting into endless trouble”, but eventually moves from the door to let him in.

Hikaru follows him through the house, passing by a room with an assortment of trophies and certificates hanging on the wall on their way to the kitchen. Sai pauses to stare at the Go board on the floor, and a vague memory of Heihachi trying to interest, then five years old, him in the world of Go flashes by his mind, disappearing as quickly as his interest at that time did.

“If it’s about allowance, your mom already told me I wasn’t allowed to give you anymore.” Heihachi says while opening the fridge door. “Orange juice?”

Hikaru gives a short grunt in response, the chair creaking with protest as he sits down and straddles the back.

“I don’t want money,” he finally says when it becomes apparent Heihachi isn’t going to change his mind this time, and Sai’s expectant stare is getting a bit too heavy to ignore.

“Hm? Then what is it?” Heihachi asks. He takes the seat across from Hikaru, then slides the glass of orange juice over.

“Can I have that Go board in the attic? Do you have stones to go with it?” Hikaru turns around in his seat and decides to cut to the chase. Next to him, Sai looks surprised, but Hikaru chooses to ignore him. Sai only said Hikaru had to get a Go set as soon as possible — it doesn’t really matter to Hikaru what kind of board he gets, or if it’s used. He doesn’t even _like_ Go.

Heihachi tries — but fails — to hide the shocked expression on his face.

“Hikaru, when did you start playing Go?” He asks. There’s an inkling of suspicion in his voice, as if this is all an elaborate plan Hikaru came up with to weasel more allowance money out of him. It is, in a way, but Heihachi doesn’t need to know that.

“Didn’t you want me to learn a few years back?” Hikaru answers, eyes steadfastly staring at the glass of orange juice in his hands. “I want to learn now.” There isn't really a way to explain his current situation without a guaranteed trip to the mental ward, he adds to himself, and Sai giggles — low and soft —  at his put-out tone.

“Then you can come here, and I’ll teach you.” Heihachi says. Hikaru knows without looking that his left eyebrow is raised in a sharp angle, a clear sign he’s not convinced by Hikaru’s vague explanation.

In a way, Hikaru had predicted this. Heihachi has always been a doting grandfather, constantly submitting to his whims, but even Hikaru has to admit the idea of him being interested in Go is a bit hard to believe. He looks over to Sai, who has ignored most of the conversation on this side in favor of exploring the kitchen and attempting to poke and prod everything he can’t touch. He really doesn’t care to learn Go, but he _does_ care about his allowance. So, he uses the last trick up his sleeve. Hikaru leans back and shoots Heihachi what he hopes is a cheeky grin.

“Gramps, aren’t you just afraid you’ll lose to me if I get the extra practice?”

***

In the end, Heihachi doesn’t give him the board in the attic, and Hikaru doesn’t care enough to ask why. He does, however, storm to the trophy room to pull out his spare, foldable, board set.

“This is good enough for a brat like you,” he huffs, and then promptly kicks Hikaru out, board and all. All-in-all, Hikaru still considers it a win on his part.

***

“Hikaru, Hikaru! Set up the board!” Sai _radiates_ excitement, racing around the room from corner to window to the other corner. It reminds Hikaru of a hyped-up energizer bunny commercial. “In the middle of the room,” he adds while Hikaru dusts off the board and stone bowls. When the board and stones are set up, Sai settles down next to Hikaru, purple eyes glimmering with an intense seriousness Hikaru has yet to see from him until now — all his previous energy captured, compressed, and redirected into a pair of amethyst orbs.

“Hikaru, put a stone down,” Sai says, quietly. There's an air of anticipation around him, and it throws Hikaru off for the briefest of moments because he can't really understand why or where it comes from.

“Anywhere?” He asks, eyeing the board in front of him.

“Yes, anywhere.”

Hikaru's no closer to understanding the situation he's in now than he was two days ago, but he reaches into a bowl anyways and pulls out a single black stone with his thumb and index finger. He gives Sai another glance, and Sai nods back encouragingly.

The dark grid lays before him, like a map of new land unexplored, and an uneasy tingle starts to travel from the bottom of his spine to the tip of his thumb and index. It's like starting a new video game, a game he purchased blindly without knowing the title or details in advance. It's surreal, how fast everything spiraled out of his control. But the stone clutched in a tight grip between his thumb and index feels hard, smooth, and undeniably real.

He sets down his first stone with a resounding _pa-chik_.

***


	2. Chapter 2

“Hikaru, let’s play a teaching game.” Sai says when the last math problem is solved and put away. Hikaru rolls his eyes, but still stands up to drag the Go set out from underneath his bed. For an entire month after his first meeting with Sai, nothing significant really happens. He attends school every day, plays soccer with his friends every weekend, splurges all his money on manga and games, and continues to know absolutely nothing about history and math. All accomplished with a ghost trailing after him twenty-four seven.  

There’s only one saving grace in return for the absolute lack of privacy: Sai knows all the math and history he doesn’t.

“Just one game,” Hikaru grumbles, unfolding the board and setting the bowls next to it. Sai simply smiles and kneels across the board, back and hip meeting at a perfect ninety degree angle that Hikaru can never — and doesn’t want to — copy.

In return for Sai’s knowledge and homework help, Hikaru finds himself sitting in front of the Go board every day for an hour — two, when Sai is annoying and persistent enough. His grades, in turn, steadily climb up, and, with their improvement, his allowance _finally_ comes back. His mom still refuses to increase his allowance — his English is abysmal and no amount of Heian ghosts can improve it — but, sometimes, he’ll find a manga magazine waiting for him in the living room after he comes home from school. That alone is incentive enough for Hikaru to continue the daily Go sessions.

“You should learn how to hold the stones properly.” Sai brings up thoughtfully, right as Hikaru pulls out a black stone from the bowl. Hikaru looks down at the stone held between his thumb and index, not really understanding what Sai’s definition of “properly” means.

“What do you mean? I am holding it.” He raises the stone up to Sai’s eye level, as if to emphasize his point. Sai’s face takes on a look Hikaru has rapidly become familiar with this past month; it’s the expression Sai makes when he really wants to have a corporeal body — if only to smack Hikaru for his ignorance.

Sai looks at the stone held between Hikaru’s fingers for a long second, then manages to squeeze out a “never mind” while grimacing. Hikaru wants to say he genuinely doesn’t know how he can hold a stone wrong, but, before he can, Sai’s already gesturing for Hikaru to put down three stones.

He dutifully places his three stones down and waits for Sai to make his first move. It takes Sai a few seconds before he points to the left corner. The hairs on Hikaru’s neck stand up in feeble warning; it’s _never_ a good thing when Sai takes his time. Since their first game roughly twenty-nine days ago, Sai has developed three modes for their games: gentle teaching, strict coaching, and all gloves are off slaughtering.

Slaughter seems to be on today’s menu, Hikaru observes with a twitching eyebrow as Sai blocks the formation of an eye for his upper-right group. He narrows his eyes, looking at the board carefully. If he connects two stones down, it would leave a couple weak shapes vulnerable, but _maybe_ black could still live…

A glance at Sai’s slightly challenging and fully taunting smirk changes his mind. _Maybe_ doesn’t work against Sai. He throws in the white flag for that particular area of territory, turning to the lower right — one of his last two remaining groups still alive — to continue the struggle. He notes Sai’s small nod of approval, and there’s a jolt of smugness from reading the board correctly running through his fingers as he sets down his next move.  

***

“It’s good you switched to the lower right, but your defense was still weak.” Sai lectures after the game is over, pointing to the group of stones on the lower right — dead, like the upper right group he had moved on from.

“Your goal from the start was to kill everything!” Hikaru bites out, index finger pointing at the ghost sitting across the board. Sai blinks, then his sleeve comes up in an attempt to hide his growing smile. “Well, your middle is still alive, isn’t it?” He tries to offer diplomatically.

Hikaru looks to the middle, and Sai’s right. It’s like hanging off the edge of a tall, bottomless pit with the tip of a finger, but it’s alive. There are two eyes on the board, surrounded by their dead comrades and an army of white stones never seeming to lose their advantage.

It’s also how their games have ended up looking like for an entire week.

An urge to flip over the board — _stupid ghosts and their stupid ability at Go_ — builds within Hikaru, but just as his hand grabs the edge of the board, Sai takes it upon himself to kindly remind him: “Hikaru, you’re the one that’s going to have to clean them up”. And, just like that, the fire is drowned out by Sai’s bucket of ice water, and Hikaru is left — once again — regretting the day he chose to raid his grandpa’s collection for extra allowance money.

“Don’t you ever, I don’t know, want to play someone stronger?” Hikaru mutters while he cleans up the stones, talking to Sai yet not really at the same time. It’s a question he’s been asking himself, and Sai, increasingly often lately. Hikaru doesn’t really know _how_ strong Sai is. Someone who died for Go and inhabited other people to play Go shouldn’t be weak, and Hikaru has a feeling that Sai is — probably — really strong, but he doesn’t know where Sai’s limits are — if he has limits.

Sai doesn’t reply, and even though Hikaru isn’t really expecting a reply, he looks up anyways just in time to catch something flash by Sai’s face. It’s gone before he can really catch what it is, but it twists at something inside of him.

“I can take you to a Go salon.” He finds himself offering, if only because he’s grateful to this eccentric thousand year old ghost for bringing his allowance back, and Go really hasn’t been all _that_ bad. It’d be fun seeing Sai slaughter someone else for a change.

“It’s a place where old geezers get together to play Go,” he explains before Sai can ask him what a Go salon is. For half a second, he can see the longing on Sai’s face, and he’s about to grab his backpack because there’s still some time before dinner is ready, but then Sai’s face changes, steels like he’s made some kind of important decision inside of him — a decision only he knows of.

“No,” Sai replies, firmly. “You’re not strong enough to play other people.”

 _I’m not strong enough to play you either_ , Hikaru wants to retort, but Sai is completely missing the point.

“I won’t be playing.” He says with a slight edge of impatience. “You are.” It’s the same tone his math teacher used on him in the past when he had to re-explain a math problem to Hikaru for the twentieth time. Sai’s eyes light up brilliantly, and Hikaru thinks _finally, he gets it_ , but then Sai’s gushing, “Hikaru, I didn’t know you cared about me so much!” And Hikaru’s patience has finally, finally run out.

“Ah, whatever! Your loss.” He grunts out, then stows away the set without giving in to the urge to throw a handful of stones at the ghost.

Sai looks a mix between amused and disapproving, but he allows Hikaru to put away the board without any further requests for another game.

***

The phone rings on a Sunday morning when his mom isn’t home, right as he finishes putting on his right kneepad.  

“Hello,” he sets his backpack next to the stand and picks up the phone, extending the cord as far as it can go to reach for the left kneepad.

“Hikaru.” Heihachi’s voice travels through the phone. He mumbles out a “Gramps, hold on,” and then velcros the remaining pad on before walking back towards the phone stand.

“Yea?” He asks, picking at the cord. It’s been awhile since he’s talked to his grandpa, now that he thinks about it. Usually, he’s over once a week — trying to pad his allowance a bit more to buy new games or magazines. But between classes, homework, soccer, and — now — Go, the things he needs to do versus the time to do it all have become a daily struggle and weekly visits to the Gramps became the sacrifice.

“...tournament…Hikaru! Are you listening?” The voice from the other line comes through sharp and loud. He nods, but then realizes Heihachi can’t really see his response and coughs lightly instead. “Yea, what?” There’s no immediate response from the other side, and he blinks, wondering if Heihachi has hung up.

The clock's second hand ticks three times, and it’s solely muscle memory when Hikaru jerks his head to the left, just half a second before “ _I knew you weren’t listening_ ” blasts from the phone, static from the handset trailing the end of Heihachi’s outburst.

“Alright, alright,” he replies unphased, looking at the clock — it’s almost ten already. “What is it?”

There’s a long sigh from the other side before Heihachi speaks again: “There’s a children’s Go tournament going on today at eleven, you should go.”

Almost immediately, Hikaru looks to Sai. _I have a soccer game at ten_ , he reminds Sai, cutting off hope before it can form. Sai’s face falls and he turns to face the door, back sagging down to match the pout Hikaru knows is also forming on his face. Hikaru ignores the twinge of guilt that goes through him, turning his attention back towards the phone.

“Do children even play Go?” He asks. The doorbell rings right after he finishes the question, and he takes another look at the clock — five minutes to ten.

“Can’t.” He continues on, not waiting for Heihachi to reply. “I have a soccer match today.” He switches the phone to his left hand and grabs the bag he set down with his right hand. “Gotta go Gramps, talk to you later.” He shoves the phone back to its proper place, ignoring the “...knew you weren’t interested…” accusation drifting over the phone from Heihachi and runs to the front door.

He plays Go _everyday —_ today, he’s going to play soccer.

“Hikaru, you’re a child too.” Sai reminds him, barely slipping out the front door before it closes on him. He sniffs, then rearranges his robes. “We’re playing Go tonight.” He doesn’t forget to add.

Hikaru locks the door behind him, and ignores Sai as well.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've edited the first chapter at least once a day, since I've posted it. Nothing big has been added content-wise, so you don't need to re-read it, but just letting you guys know. 
> 
> Please let me know if there are any obvious grammar issues. I try to edit it before I post, but somehow I always find more errors, or a different way I want to word things. I'll try to limit my edits to obvious errors (and maybe only edit my own draft and post it up all at once when this story is completed).


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